Moritake Tanabe

Moritake Tanabe (26 February 1889-10 July 1949) was a Lieutenant-General of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, serving as the commander of the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army from April 1943 to August 1945.

Biography
Moritake Tanabe was born on 26 February 1889 in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1910 and from the Army Staff College in 1918, and he worked in the Ministry of War during the Interwar Years. In 1937, he became Chief of Staff of the Japanese Tenth Army, briefly serving as commandant of the tank school in 1938 before becoming chief-of-staff of the North China Area Army in 1941. As Vice Chief of the General Staff from 1941 to 1943, he strenuously opposed the Attack on Pearl Harbor and declaring war on the United States, and he favored a defensive strategy during World War II. In April 1943, he took over the Japanese Twenty-Fifth Army on Sumatra, and he remained in that post until the end of the war. After the end of the war, a military tribunal convicted him of war crimes in connection to the mistreatment of Allied Powers prisoners of war, and he was hanged on 10 July 1949 in Medan, Dutch East Indies.